NATIONAL DIET LIBRARY
DIGITAL LIBRARY MEDIUM TERM PLAN FOR 2004
TOSHIYUKI MUTOH
Kansai-kan of the National Diet Library, Japan
Email: mutoh@ndl.go.jp
ABSTRACTThe National Diet Library (NDL) drew up National Diet Library Digital Library Medium Term Plan for2004 in February 2004. This plan was intended to build on the accomplishments of the digital libraryservices the NDL had been tackling and specifies the targets of the digital library services for the next five
years or so. The targets are three: building digital archives such as acquiring domestic Internet
information; expanding information on information resources; building a portal site leading at “one stop’’
to digital information kept by respective domestic organizations. As part of the digital archives the NDL
will digitize and make available its books published in and after the Meiji era. The acquisition of and theaccess to domestic Internet information will be legislated and the acquisition will be done not only by theunit of website, but also by the unit of work as “online deposit’’. The necessary framework for theseshould be prepared so that the three targets will be met satisfactorily.

INTRODUCTION

The National Diet Library (NDL) issued “National Diet Library Vision 2004’’ in February 2004 anddeclared inside and outside of the Library its missions and roles. This vision reflects the situation that the
rapid development of information network has greatly changed the way information is disseminated insociety. Among the major challenges the NDL will face the vision refers to “building digital archives’’,
which will accumulate digital information ― information resources shared among the people ― andmake it available.

Under this vision National Diet Library Digital Library Medium Term Plan for 2004 (Medium Term Plan)
was drawn up. The Medium Term Plan was based on what the digital library service accomplished by
2003 and specifies concretely the direction of the digital library services the NDL should develop in thenext five years or so and the necessary framework to bring these into reality. The Medium Term Planconsists of five parts: the background to the planning, the achievements of the Digital Library Concept by
the end of 2003, the guiding principles for the planning, the targets of the digital library services and thenecessary framework for their realization. Today I will give you the gist of it.

1

BACKGROUND TO THE PLANNING

Behind the formulation of the Medium Term Plan there are changes in the social environment
surrounding digital information:

1-1 Digital information as social infrastructure
It is the case that digital information is increasing in significance as social infrastructure. Various humanactivities now deeply depend on computers and information communication networks. Information iselectronically produced, disseminated and available in any field, whether political, economic, social,
cultural or whatever.

1-2 International environment on digital information
The change in the international situation on digital information is another behind- the –scene influence.
“The Charter on the Preservation of the Digital Heritage’’ was adopted at the 32nd UNESCO General
Conference in 2003. It declared that the preservation of digital information such as Internet information,although it is significant in present society, is insecure, and considering the current situation, eachgovernment needs to raise awareness of the issue and to make efforts for preservation.

Koninklijke Bibliotheek (The National Library of the Netherlands) has been conducting its accumulationand preservation project of electronic journals and the National Library of Australia its PANDRA project.
Like these libraries each national library of the world recognizes that collecting, accumulating, preserving
and providing digital information are imminent challenges and tackles them vigorously.

1-3 Domestic situation on digital information
Lastly, there are some changes of the domestic situation on digital information. At the end of fiscal 2000
the Japanese government issued the e-Japan Priority Policy Program and started promoting “digitizing
and archiving the holdings of museums, libraries and so on’’. The e-Japan Priority Policy Program 2004,
to preserve and expand the availability of the contents kept by the government and others, requires themto establish a cooperation scheme with the NDL, and the central government is moving actively towardarchiving digital information.

2

THE ACHIEVEMENTS OF THE DIGITAL LIBRARY SERVICES OF THE NDL SO FAR

The Medium Term Plan summarizes the previous digital library services, that is, “the accomplishments of‘the Digital Library Concept’ by the end of 2003’’. The NDL, based on the “National Diet Library Digital
Library Concept’’ drawn up in 1998, built up the digital library infrastructure and expanded digital libraryservices. It has been more than a year since the Medium Term Plan came out and today I will update theinformation of the major digital library services of the NDL.

2-1 Producing and providing digital contents
The NDL has been facilitating digitization of its holdings. To date we have digitized and made public
some 55,000 books published in the Meiji era and held by the NDL into the Digital Library from the
Meiji Era. We have also produced and made available some 37,000 frames of image data of rare books
and the like.

The full-texts of the Diet minutes from the first session to the present are also available and this July westarted to provide the texts and image data of the Imperial Diet minutes. For the service for the Diet we
also provide the materials produced by the NDL digitally via the Diet WAN.

Besides we have been producing and making available the contents of our electronic exhibitions. At
present there are nine of these: the Birth of the Constitution of Japan, the Portraits of Modern Japanese
Historical Figures, the Picture Book Gallery, to mention a few.

2-2 Web archiving and providing – WARP(Web ARchiving Project)
The NDL has been experimentally collecting, accumulating and making available the information
resources on the Internet. The websites produced by government organizations and relevant organizations,municipalities (cities, towns, and villages) before merger, and universities, and of a variety of events are,under the permission of the copyright holders, collected and provided. At present some 1,500 titles ofelectronic journals and the websites of some 1,300 organizations (27 million files, 1.6 terabytes) are
accumulated and available.

2-3 Information leading to materials
2-3-1 Secondary information
The NDL-OPAC, which covers almost all the basic bibliographies of the NDL holdings, has been
available since October 2002. The NDL-OPAC provides some 6.4 million items of periodical indexes
from some ten thousand titles of academic journals published in Japan as well as some 6.5 million itemsof bibliographic information of books, magazines, newspapers, doctoral dissertations and so on. It also
allows us to order copies off-site.

The NDL also provides a union catalog of Japanese books held by prefectural libraries and others, a union
catalog of juvenile literature and a union catalog of newspapers.

2-3-2 Navigation to outside resources
Some information resources on the Internet cannot be collected automatically and Database Navigation
Service (Dnavi), a portal service, is available especially for databases, which are a significant part ofInternet Information. There are some 9,600 databases collected at the moment.

2-4 Improvement of the NDL website
The NDL website was drastically renewed in October 2002 and it works as a service point for the generalusers and provides the full range of digital library services.

2-5 Research and development
Since fiscal 2002 the NDL has been conducting research and development on preservation of digital
information. It also studied the literature of both domestic and foreign experiences of digital information
preservation, conducted a feasibility study of the CD-ROM materials held by the NDL in the latest
environment and studied their migration and emulation. Furthermore, we are developing a database ofreference records as a joint project with domestic libraries.

3

GUIDING PRINCIPLES FOR PLANNING

The Medium Term Plan was drawn up, responding to the above-mentioned needs and achievements, toexpand the digital library services. There are three guiding principles:First, the employment of information communication networks will greatly expand the accessibility of the
NDL services, with no time or space limitation.

Second, the information environment has changed, and in and out of the country, the significance of theacquisition, organization, preservation and dissemination of digital information is rising.

Third, it is essential to cooperate with related organizations in order to improve the digital library servicesof the NDL and it is vital to specify the direction in which the NDL is heading and to make itself
understood by the organizations.

4

TARGETS OF DIGITAL LIBRARY SERVICES

There are three targets of the digital library services: building digital archives, enriching information on
information resources and creating a portal function for digital archives.

4-1 Building digital archives
The first target of digital library services is for the NDL to be a pivotal center of digital archives in Japan;
there are two aspects, that is, digitization of the holdings and acquisition of Internet information.

4-1-1 Digitizing its holdings
The NDL will keep on digitizing our holdings, which are continuing projects from the previous stage. For
the digitization of some 170 thousand books published in the Meiji era among the NDL holdings, most ofthem, after copyrights have been cleared within this fiscal year, will be available in the Digital Libraryfrom the Meiji Era. Then we will start the digitization of the books published in the Taisho era and heldby the NDL. We will also continue the digitization of the rare books among the NDL holdings.

4-1-2 Acquiring Internet information
The acquisition of Internet information is another task. This is to collect Internet information either
institutionally or selectively mainly generated inside Japan, using certain criteria of acquisition,
preservation and access. Institutional acquisition is now under scrutiny to legislate for it, responding to
the report of the Legal Deposit System Council of December 2004. The report proposed that thecomprehensive acquisition of the Internet information generated domestically should be legislated.
Listening to the opinions of the relevant organizations and the public, the NDL is considering starting
gradually with the websites of the central government, municipalities, academic organizations and otherpublic organizations. There are two ways of acquisition under consideration.

ⅰ) Acquiring web information by website
The acquisition of web information by website is one way. It is to collect web information by the unit ofwebsite into web archives in the same structure as it was generated whenever possible, and accumulate,preserve and provide the information in the form which allows chronological recognition. At present there
are two kinds we have in mind: bulk acquisition, which automatically collects specific domains among
Internet information submitted in Japan, and the other kind which is conducted by theme or with different
frequency, using some criteria like the present WARP project. The former requires a vast amount ofmemory capacity and for the time being we will collect “snapshots’’ once a year or so.

ii) Acquiring web information by work
There is plenty of information in the depth of the World Wide Web which cannot be collectedautomatically. There is also some information which could be collected automatically, but would be moresuitable to be collected by the unit of work, such as books and articles. For these what we have in mind is
the “online deposit’’ system, through which the information will be acquired, organized, preserved andserved.

4-2 Expanding information on information resources
The second target of digital library services is to facilitate the access to the digital information which has
been archived. For this purpose we will prepare a searching interface such as full-text searching andintellectual concept searching, improve searching tools for information resources, and create and provide
digital exhibitions from the digital archives we are building.

4-3 Portal function of digital archives
The third target of digital library service is to build a total site which will navigate digital information
around Japan. The NDL website is the service point of the NDL only, but we will open another service
point where the users will be able to obtain necessary information at one stop. This will lead users toappropriate digital information resources and information supply services mainly provided by the central
government and other public organizations as well as the NDL digital archives.

Websites in Japan

Electronic journals,
electronic books etc.

local
Government

academicbusiness

s
e
v
i
h
c
r
a
b
e
W

cultureRegistration,
preservation

公的機関

Online deposit

Archives of public organization
private archives

Archives of libraries
Archives of works
Archivesofwebsites

NDL
Digital archives

Portal of
digital archives

WARP

Digitized contents(Digital Library from the Meiji Era,
NDLRare Books Image Database etc.)
OPAC

Sending
information

To JapanTo the world
To everyone
seeking information

The
The Internet
Internet

officeFig 1. Image of NDL digital archives

homeschool5

NECESSARY FRAMEWORK FOR REALIZATION

Lastly, to bring these into reality, besides the organizational readiness of the NDL, it will be important tocooperate with related organizations, prepare the legislation and facilitate research and development.

5-1 Cooperation with related organizations
Establishing the necessary cooperative relationship with the relevant organizations will be an especiallyvital challenge. Standardizing metadata and long-term preservation, and securing the reciprocal
operability of portal functions, will be some of the technical issues which will require cooperation among
the related organizations to solve and operate them.

5-2 Preparing legislation
Preparing the relevant legislation will be another. It will be essential to legislate such laws as will restrict
the copyrights and the like of the Internet information when we acquire, accumulate and preserve
domestic Internet information as our cultural heritage.

5-3 Promoting research and development
Promoting research and development will be the last but not the least. There are numerous technical,
financial and institutional issues to be solved for the long-term preservation of digital information. It will
be important to build a framework to facilitate research and development in cooperation with relatedorganizations in order to deal with the challenges.

Table 1 Major Digital Library Services of the NDL (Secondary Information)
title

summary(NDL-OPAC) National Diet
Library Online Public Access
Catalog

Japanese Books (3.06 million volumes), Foreign Books (900,000
volumes), Japanese Magazines and Newspapers (120,000 titles), Western
Magazines and Newspapers (50,000 titles), Domestic Doctoral
Dissertations (310,000 items), Technical Reports (1.89 million items) etc.
Total 6.5 million items of the NDL holdings are searchable through thissystem. There are 13.4 million items when Japanese Periodicals Index
and National Union Catalog of Braille and Recorded Books are included.

(NDL-OPAC) Japanese
Periodicals Index

Indexes of 10,000 titles of mainly academic Journals published in Japan.
Indexing level is equivalent of tables of contents. 6.4 million items.

(NDL-OPAC)National Union
Catalog of Braille and Recorded Nation-wide union catalog of Braille and recorded books. 300,000 items.
Books
NDL Asian Language Materials Newspapers and magazines written in Chinese and Korean and books in
OPAC
Chinese, Korean and Vietnamese processed in 1986 or later.

National Union Catalog
Network System

Union catalog for interlibrary loan among public libraries. There are 926
participants, including 50 libraries which offer their data (57 prefecturallibraries, 151 libraries of designated cities, 718 libraries of cities, towns orvillages and the NDL). 28.2 million titles (7.78 million basic titles).

Union Catalog of Children's
Literature

Union catalog of juvenile literature held by six organizations, including
the NDL. 415,361 books （56,809 western books included). 6,966 titles ofmagazines.

National Union Catalog ofNewspapers

Union catalog of newspapers held by 1,252 organizations in Japan,
including the NDL. 19,413 titles as of March 2004.

Japanese National Bibliography
Internet version of Japanese National Bibliography weekly list.
weekly list
Books on Japan

Bibliographic information of western books on Japan processed by the
NDL since 2002. Available since January 2003.

Index to the laws and regulations from 1886 (effective, defunct, legislated)
Index to the Japanese Laws and and the bills from the first Diet session in1947 (bills and proposals ofRegulations
treaties). Deliberations of bills and proposals of treaties are searchable inthe minutes of the Diet.
Review of Reference Books

Review of reference books held by the NDL. 20,000 items.

Database Navigation Service(Dnavi)Navigation to the databases on the websites. 9,600 items

Table 2 Major Digital Library Services of the NDL (Digital Archives)
title

summary

Full-text Database System for
the Minutes of the Diet

Database for the minutes of the Diet from the first session to the present.

Rare Books Image Database

Colored images from the rare books held by the NDL. Japanese/Chinese
old books, colored wooden prints and pictures.Important cultural assets
are included. 861titles. 37,000 frames of images.

Digital Library from the Meiji
Era(Texts and Tables ofContents)

Black and white images of texts of books published in the Meiji era. The
tables of contents are also provided. 34,800 items, 54,957 volumes, 6
million images. Total 170,000 volumes (100,000 items) will become
available in 2003-2005.

Digital Library of Children's
Literature

Black and white images of juvenile literature in and before 1950. 322
titles in the public domain are available on the Internet. 1,200 titles under
the permission of copyright holders are available inside the International
Library of Children's Literature.

NDL Gallery Birth of theConstitution of Japan

Materials on the formulation of the Japanese Constitution.

NDL Gallery Rare Books of the Four important cultural assets and others from the rare books and semiNational Diet Libraryrare books among the NDL holdings. Total some one hundred items.
NDL Gallery Incunabula Dawn of Western Printing

Incunabula, books that were printed using metal type up to the year 1500.

NDL Gallery Portraits ofModern Japanese HistoricalFiguresStatesman, bureaucrats, military figures and businessmen etc. who
influenced the formation of Modern Japan. Portrait photos of some two
hundred people.

NDL Gallery The Japanese
CalendarDigital images of the calendar collection showing the history of theJapanese calendar. Available since October 2002.

NDL Gallery Japanese Ex-libris Ex-libris stamps on books showing the footsteps of the collectors and theStampstrend of the time. Available since July 2003.
NDL Gallery Nippon in the
World

Electronic exhibition consisting of three themes: Scenic mementos ofJapan, Vienna International Exposition and Modern Japanese Political
History Materials.

NDL Gallery Exhibition: Eyes
to Nature Natural History inEast and West (the Edo)

Japanese picture books of plants, birds and fishes printed in the late Edo
era from the NDL holdings.

NDL Gallery Exhibition: Eyes
to Nature Natural History inEast and West (the West)

Western picture books of plants from the NDL holdings.

Picture Book Gallery

Virtual exhibition of digital images of picture books.

Electronic journals on the websites, websites kept by the governmentorganizations and relevant organizations are collected, organized,
Web Archiving Project (WARP) preserved and provided. Available since November 2002. 1,496 Electronic
journals, 36 government organizations, 1,306 relevant organizations.
Total 27 million files.